CBS Showtime reportedly caught mining crypto currency on their websites without consent from their users
First The Pirate Bay, now CBS Showtime, who have reportedly declined to comment on the issue and just removed the mining script from their websites for now, so while it’s of course possible they were hacked, let’s assume for a moment they weren’t and instead deliberately tried out how much money they could make with mining compared to serving ads.
Why? Because even if in this case it turns out it was unintentional, in others it wasn’t and there will be more companies going in this direction now that ads stop making less and less money due to adblockers for example or the unwillingness of advertisers to see their ads anywhere near content that could be seen as “controversial”.
I can’t even begin to say how unethical this is if it’s done without the user’s consent. It is probably even illegal and if not, it should be. If a computer does more work, it drains more power. This doesn’t just slow down your computer which is bad enough, it costs you actual money on your electricity bill. Companies who do this are stealing money from their users. Not a lot of money, but stealing just a little from everyone doesn’t make it any less theft, and it obviously adds up to a massive amount of money or they wouldn’t bother doing it in the first place.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, just think about how bad this is publicity wise for crypto currency as a whole if this becomes a common tactic. People will start hating crypto currencies as much as they hate ads on the web, because now visiting websites will make their computers slow down to a crawl. Everyone who has built a business on crypto currency should be very wary of this, it’s going to do serious harm to your business and that includes everyone who makes money posting articles here on Steemit.
The Pirate Bay doing it I can understand, somebody who visits Pirate Bay to illegally download a movie or a TV series cannot complain when they become the victim themselves (and no I don’t care if you do it, unless you have more than enough money to pay for it). But when companies start doing this on mainstream websites, it’s bad. Doesn't make me hopeful for the future of the internet.
Here are some articles about it: TheNextWeb, Gizmodo, The Register
And a thread on Hacker News here.
I was paranoid because of this before i even heard it is a real thing.
It's really no different than a criminal hacker infecting thousands of computers with malware and then remote controlling them as a botnet to make money. There should be severe punishment for companies who do this, but I'm sure they'll just hide a clause somewhere in their Terms of Service agreement that allows them to do it. I guess adblockers could also block these types of crypto malware, but that would only solve half of the problem since only half of internet users use adblockers.